empty rooms (the secret companion)
by luluhrh
Summary: Amy, Rory, and River have nothing to do, so they go exploring somewhere the Doctor didn't want them to go... Warning: Jealous!Sad!River, Angry!Sad!Regretful!Doctor, VeryConfusedAndSad!Ponds. THIS IS SAD!FIC. IT IS ALSO DOCTOR/ROSE. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.


**I AM SO SORRY FOR MY ABSENCE! PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!**

 ***catches random fez* Oh, is this forgiveness? Thanks! *puts fez on head***

 **So, anyway-**

 ***fez gets shot off head* FUCKING SHI-**

 **Sorry about my cursing. I guess it wasn't forgiveness, then. Please accept my sincerest apologies for misconstruing that.**

 **I'm also sorry about starting on _Doctor Who_ while I still haven't finished a few other stories. Sorry! Working on those, I promise!**

 **I wrote this while at camp this summer, so this is the result of too much time with a notebook and a red pen. I ran out of ink for that pen. That's how many Doctor Who fanfic ideas I wrote with it.**

 **Disclaimer: Please. If I owned this, Rose would never get separated from the Doctor. Damn it, RTD!**

 **I hope you like this!**

* * *

The console of the TARDIS hummed as Amy, Rory, and River lounged around it. The Doctor was tinkering beneath the floor, oblivious to his companions. They were just traveling leisurely through the Vortex. No one seemed to need saving at the moment, which left the Doctor's friends with little to do. River was slyly turning the stabilizers on and mending the brakes, but there was only so much she could do without the Doctor knowing she'd been tampering with his precious ship. Amy and Rory couldn't even fix the TARDIS to alleviate the boredom, seeing as nothing on the control panel made the slightest bit of sense to them.

Amy groaned. "If we don't do something, _anything_ , soon, I might explode."

"I'm with you," Rory muttered. Then he made a face. "Except for the exploding part." He turned to his daughter. "Got any ideas, River?"

River sighed, but smirked all the same. "Why ask me?"

"You always have good ideas!" Amy said. Rory nodded vigorously in agreement.

"Ugh," River said playfully, "responsibility." She leaned forward, smiling. "But, as it happens, I do have an idea."

Amy jumped up from her seat, the glint in her eye matching River's mischievous grin. "What are you planning, River? Is it something the Doctor would disapprove of?"

River didn't reply. Instead, she sauntered over to the stairs, motioning for her parents to follow, which they did without complaint. When they left, the Doctor hardly noticed their absence.

Out in the hall, River turned to face Amy and Rory. "How many rooms in the TARDIS have you seen?"

Rory groaned and mumbled something like, "Way too many," while Amy brightened and rattled off a list of the rooms she'd been shown or had randomly stumbled upon. Overall, there were quite a few.

River nodded as though both these answers had been exactly what she'd expected. "All right, so you've seen a fair few. But," she lowered her voice dramatically, "there's a whole wing he never visits when we're around. He's never even shown it to _me_ , and he's shown me every other room in this place." Her smirk widened. "What do you two say to a little bit of exploring?"

* * *

After a brief, rather one-sided discussion in which only Rory objected to the idea of going somewhere the Doctor didn't want them to go and was quickly overruled by the women, the trio made their way down a previously-unexplored hall. At the end of the hall was a brown door with thin white stripes painted vertically on it, like a pinstripe suit. It was locked, but it wasn't a very good lock and River jimmied it open with rather unnerving ease.

On the other side, there was another hall dotted with doors. Upon opening the first few, they discovered, to their confusion, a few rooms that were similar to ones in their own wing, but also quite different from the ones they knew: a library, decidedly more organized than theirs and painted a soothing shade of blue; a kitchen with cheery yellow wallpaper and completely disassembled appliances; and a lovely sitting room with someone's card game strewn across the table. Everything felt so lived in, like the occupants of these rooms had stepped out mere moments ago. Yet everything was covered in a layer of dust. The people who once occupied these rooms had been gone a long time. It sent shivers down Rory's spine, and Amy looked distinctly uneasy.

River noticed and gave them both Looks. "You didn't think you were the first people he traveled with, did you? He's had loads of companions, a few per regeneration, and this is his eleventh."

Rory frowned. "Regeneration?"

"When he's close to death, his body regenerates, but he changes his appearance," Amy explained quickly, remembering the Doctor when he told her about that particular quirk of his people. "Time Lord trait."

This was clearly not something Rory had expected to hear, but he just shrugged it off. _Aliens_.

"Yes, thank you," River said, nodding gratefully at Amy before continuing. "Anyway, he's told me about some of his other companions. Sarah Jane Smith was his companion for a while- third and fourth bodies, I think- but he saw her again in his previous body. She was and still is an investigative journalist, and she still works on alien mishaps with her son and his friends. And Romana... she was a Time Lady, a friend from before he destroyed Gallifrey." This shocked Amy and Rory, to know that the Doctor had traveled with others of his kind. Then again, why should they be surprised? He was incredibly old. He hadn't always been alone.

River started, remembering something else. "Oh, and in his very first incarnation, the Doctor traveled with Susan, his granddaughter."

"His _what_?" Amy erupted. "He has a granddaughter?"

"Had, Amy," River corrected grimly. After letting that sink in for a moment, she added, "He had some companions after the war, too. Martha Jones, Jack Harkness, and Donna Noble all traveled with him at one point or another. He also mentioned a Mickey Smith, who is apparently married to Martha now. I don't know much about them, other than that Martha is a real doctor and worked for UNIT but now does freelance with Mickey, and Jack Harkness basically was Torchwood after the incident at Canary Wharf, but he rebuilt it in the Doctor's image. Jack was also a very... _interesting_ sort of man. A bit of an experimental guy. American, too, and from the 51st century. And immortal. And _sexy_." River smirked at the looks on her parents' faces, then gazed around the corridor, looking at the doors there. "This is where they all stayed when they lived here. We'll probably find their old rooms soon."

Sure enough, the three found a cluster of rooms in the same general area. Each was labeled with a name. They entered the one that read "Martha" first.

The room they found was neatly ordered, with a desk and lamp, a vanity, and a richly upholstered four poster bed. The walls were covered by soft red and orange drapes, which contrasted nicely with the blue bed and its green curtains edged with gold. A few medical journals lay stacked on the desk, but other than that, the room was empty of any personal effects, as if Martha had known she wasn't coming back. Everything was covered in a light layer of dust.

The next room they entered was Jack's. Everything was a different color, from the violet sheets and royal blue duvet on the elegant king-sized bed, to the forest green walls and the mahoghany bureau. This room was decorated with pictures of a man- Jack, probably- kissing a large array of different creatures, male, female, and every variation thereof. They seemed to have been taken without Jack's knowledge, but they amused the trio. Everything else was gone, and this room, too, was dusty.

Donna's room was next. This room had bright walls of a lovely shade of purple, a cream-colored chest of drawers, and a bed covered in pillows of a hundred different colors. The closet was open, revealing an assortment of clothing, multiple hat boxes, and a veritable army of shoes. There were also a few photos on the bedside table. One was of a laughing woman with red hair and an old man, laughing with her. The other was the red head and the old man again, but with another woman who appeared to be between the other two in age. The three agreed that this must have been Donna and her family. Her room made them feel saddest. She had meant to come back, but she evidently never had.

They peeked into Mickey's room, but it was rather boring. It looked a bit like a hotel room, only nicer and infinitely more comfortable. The only thing that made it obvious that this room had belonged to someone, aside from the name on the door, were the pictures. One was of a dark-skinned man with his arm around a laughing blonde. Another showed him and the blonde again, but instead with a tall man with a manic grin and a pinstriped suit. Upon seeing the man in the suit, River's eyes widened, but she said nothing, leading Amy and Rory out of the room.

"Who was that blonde woman?" Amy wondered aloud. "I think I might have seen her in one of Jack's pictures. Y'know." She made kissing noises. "Although it seemed more like they were joking around in that one... And who was the other guy? The tall, foxy one?"

"Hey," Rory protested.

"You know I love you," Amy reassured him.

"That was the Doctor's tenth regeneration," River said quietly, interrupting the domestics.

Amy gasped. "Really?" She laughed. "He really was rather pretty back then."

"I'm still standing right here, you know," Rory said.

Amy kissed him on the cheek. "I know. He's got nothing on you, husband." She turned back to River. "So, wait, who's the blonde, then?"

"I don't know," River said, biting her lip in frustration. Her eyes brightened as they alighted upon a new door. "But maybe this room will help."

This door was different. Unlike the others, it had no name tag. Rather, several stickers adorned its pink surface, all different caricatures of roses. Strangely enough, the way the stickers were arranged spelled the words "Bad Wolf".

Amy tried the doorknob, but it wouldn't turn. "It's locked!" she exclaimed in surprise. "And it feels like a better lock than the first door had."

"Maybe we should leave this one be, then," Rory suggested, forever the voice of reason. "The Doctor wouldn't have just locked it for no reason."

River ignored this, already picking the lock with a hairpin that had been hidden in her mass of curls. Rory sighed. He should have known it was pointless to try and make his girls see sense.

The lock clicked.

"Got it!" River announced. She stood up, tucked her pin away, and opened the door.

On the other side, there was an explosion of color, mostly pink. Soft pink walls, hot pink duvet, magenta rolling chair, pale pink desk, etc. The carpet was a deep purple, the ceiling was sky blue, the sheets and pillows were pale yellow, and the vanity and closet were white. Clothes in all the colors of the rainbow were bursting out of the closet and strewn across the room, and the bed was a mess.

"Whoa," Amy managed in the face of the chaos. "That's..."

"Yeah," Rory breathed. "Whoa."

"Whose room could this have been?" Amy wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure," River replied. Secretly, she thought it might belong to the mysterious blonde, but she didn't want to say it in case she was right. Something about the very existence of the blonde made River feel... weird.

Before Amy could fully analyze the odd look on her daughter's face, Rory piped up. "Look! I've got photos!"

The three crowded around the photo album Rory had uncovered and examined the cover. It, too, was pink, but it had a name. "Rose".

"Suddenly the roses on the door make sense," Amy muttered.

Rory ignored her and opened the album.

They discovered almost immediately that Rose was, indeed, the blonde girl in the other photos. First there were only inconclusive baby pictures, little Rose with a mop of dark hair held in her mother and father's arms. Soon, however, her face became one that they recognized. Not long after that, the father disappeared. Rose grew up, her father not appearing in any other photo, but there were plenty of people to make up for it. A young boy, obviously Mickey, appeared in many pictures. A few other girls, too, labeled as Shireen and Keisha. Shortly after the two girls appeared, Rose dyed her hair blonde. There were a few of Rose and a boy who looked sort of "cool" and who was labeled as Jimmy with a few hearts, but his face was X-ed over in red pen.

Then everyone else disappeared, and Rose had pictures of herself and a man, older than her by at least a decade, with big ears, a big nose, and piercing blue eyes. He wasn't conventionally handsome, but there was something captivating about him, especially when the pictures caught him smiling. He was always wearing a leather jacket, almost like armor. In the few where he wasn't, he wore a jumper, but without the jacket, he looked oddly naked. Vulnerable.

"That's the ninth Doctor," River said in astonishment. "But... but in the other picture, she was with the tenth! Then does that mean..."

"Mean what?" Rory asked.

"Nothing. Turn the page, please."

Rory did so, revealing Jack Harkness.

"So Jack traveled with both of them," Amy said in understanding. "Continue, Rory."

For the next few pages, Jack, the Doctor, and Rose smiled out at them. They looked so happy and carefree, as though they had all the time in the world to waste. But the three looking into Rose's life knew better. A few pages later, both Jack and the ninth Doctor disappeared abruptly, replaced by the man in the pinstriped suit.

"It's the tenth Doctor again," Amy said. "So she stayed with him through his regeneration?"

River knew this question wasn't really a question, so she remained silent. Besides, she was too busy thinking. Rose... who was she, really? Why had she stayed? She wasn't Martha, or Donna, or any other companion that the Doctor had mentioned. She was one he'd never told her about, one she never even knew existed. She didn't look special, and yet she had stayed with the Doctor through the biggest change there was, was constantly by his side, and kept looking at him in a way that sent prickles up River's spine.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked in a soft, deadly voice.

The trio spun around in shock.

There, in the doorway of the room, stood the Doctor in all his tweedy, bow tied glory. His hands, always twitching about frantically, were in fists at his sides. His normally cheerful countenance was twisted into something dark and terrifying.

"W-We were just... exploring?" Rory replied uncertainly, glancing at his wife and daughter for back-up.

Amy stared in horror at the Doctor's anger. She couldn't answer her husband anymore than she could tear her eyes from the Doctor's stormy gaze. The deep rage of her best friend, directed at her and her family, rendered her mouth useless.

River had no such qualms. She stared defiantly into the Doctor's green orbs and held up the album.

"Who is she?" the Doctor's wife asked, voice void of emotion. "Why did you never tell me about her?"

For a moment, it appeared that the Doctor would not dignify River's question with a reply. Then, with a weary sigh, he stepped forward. When he saw the pictures, he seemed to break, his hard expression melting away to reveal the shattered man beneath it.

"That's Rose," he said simply.

River was not satisfied. "Rose who?" she prompted.

The Doctor didn't meet her eyes. "Rose Marion Tyler. Born on April 27th, 1987, to Peter Alan Tyler and Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler. I met her in 2005. She was nineteen. I saved her from Autons in the basement of the department store she worked at, then blew up the store. We met twice more, and she saved my life. I invited her along... and she said no." He smiled softly, eyes glazed over with memory. "She was the only person I ever asked twice for. I left, then came back and said, 'Did I mention it also travels in time?' And this time, she came." His smile slipped away. "She came and she stayed as long as she could."

Amy knew she shouldn't ask, but she couldn't help it. "For how long?"

The Doctor grinned bitterly. "I asked her that once. She said she'd stay forever. And y'know what? I believed her." He laughed, but it was empty of anything but grief. "I should've known. It's the ones who promise forever that always end up being impossible to reach."

"But how long was it really?" Amy insisted, unable to let it go, despite how the Doctor was reacting. She needed the full story.

"Two years." The Doctor's voice cracked. "Give or take a few months."

"Who was she?" Rory asked, repeating River's earlier question. "To you, I mean," he clarified quickly.

The Doctor shrugged and replied, "She was a companion."

"Yeah, but besides that."

"She... She was my best friend." Before Rory could probe any further, the Doctor continued, "She healed me after the Time War, made me better. She saved me from so many things, myself included." He sat down on the bed. "We met the Daleks twice in my ninth form. The first time, it was injured, a soldier thrown from the Time War and unaware that it had ended. I... I tormented it, but when she saw it, Rose pitied it. She didn't know what it was, what it had done. She touched it, healed it. And then it changed. Her DNA, the very essence of her being, stopped it from being able to kill her and someone else, too. I was going to kill it, but she stopped me. It just wanted to feel the sunlight. That was all. Then it killed itself, disgusted by its own propensity to feel."

He paused, letting the story sink in. When no one said anything, he continued on to the next tale.

"The second time, millions of Daleks had survived, using humans to create more of themselves. They were insane from their so-called 'impurity', which made them all the more terrible. I could have destroyed them, but the only way I could involved destroying the satellite I was on, with Jack and Rose, as well the entire Earth below. I... sent Rose home. I didn't want her to die, or live to see me become a murderer. Although, in the end, I couldn't use my weapon. I chose to be a coward instead. I would have died." He smiled. "But I didn't, because Rose came back."

River frowned. "She came back? That's impossible. The emergency protocols-"

"I know," the Doctor interrupted. "No one else could have done it, I'm sure. But Rose Tyler always excelled at the impossible. She didn't give up on finding a way back to me. She managed to open the heart of the TARDIS and look inside. She absorbed the Time Vortex. It should have killed her. Even for a Time Lord it would have been almost impossible, and if they had succeeded, they would have become a god. A vengeful god. But she was human, and she came back, destroying the Daleks by breaking apart their atoms. They dissolved before my eyes. She even brought Jack back to life. He had died, killed by a Dalek, but she brought him back. She couldn't control her power, though, and ended up bringing him back to life forever. But she was dying. She couldn't hold all that energy forever. So I took it out of her. I saved her, and I regenerated because of it. The last face my ninth face saw was her, and my tenth form was born in front of her, for her."

For a long, tense moment, silence reigned.

Then River whispered, "You loved her." There was no judgement, no feeling in her tone, but her eyes were dark with sadness.

The Doctor winced. He nodded slightly, then murmured, "I never said it to her. I tried once, but I ran out of time. I got another chance, my last chance to tell her... but I chose not to. It wasn't my place- it wasn't my _right_ to tell her. Someone else had to say it, otherwise she never would have been happy."

Amy frowned. "How does a Time Lord run out of time?"

The Time Lord in question didn't answer. He just shook his head and closed the album, placing it on the bed beside him. "What matters is that she didn't die. I didn't lose her to that. She is alive, she is happy. And if me not being with her is what it took to make those two things possible, then so be it." He stood up, dusting off his trousers and preparing to leave.

"She loved you, then?" Rory questioned.

"Yes," came the Doctor's reply, quiet but sharp. "She said so. She came back twice because she did."

"But if she loved you, how could she be happy without you?" River asked bitterly. The words left a sour taste in her mouth.

"She said she'd stay with me forever," the Doctor said, almost calmly. His voice shook slightly as he continued, "But her forever is different from mine. She could live out her days by my side, but I would end up watching her grow old and die. And I wouldn't be able to follow, because she wouldn't want me to. Now, she's far away, somewhere I can't ever go again without destroying the universes, with a human-Time Lord metacrisis."

River nearly fell over. "A metacrisis? You're kidding."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, I'm not. It's not something to joke about. In my last body, I was a bit vain. I happened to have a spare hand lying around- don't ask- so when I was going to regenerate, I only used enough energy to heal me. I channeled the rest into my handy spare hand, allowing me to stay in my tenth form. However, Donna touched it, triggering a human-Time Lord metacrisis. She became the DoctorDonna, and the other me, the human me, was born. Donna... she had to forget me and everything we did, otherwise she would die, but the other metacrisis was stable enough to last for a good seventy to eighty years. He was half-human. One heart. Rose has a version of me that remembers all the things I've done, with and without her, and loves her just as much as I did. He can grow old with her and die with her. The one adventure I can never have."

The beings in the room were all silent. The three humans were contemplating the Doctor's decision and its repercussions. The Time Lord was trying not to regret it.

"She was happy," Amy said at last. "But you aren't."

"Of course I'm happy!" the Doctor protested. "I don't spend every second of every day consciously remembering that I lost people. They're always with me, naturally, but I've also got you three! You make me happy."

"We do?" Amy asked skeptically, remembering the look in the tenth Doctor's eyes in those pictures. She'd never seen that look in her Doctor's eyes.

"Of course!" the Doctor exclaimed again. "Why else would I take you along? If you didn't make me happy you all would get annoying. But yours is a special kind of annoying-ness that makes me love you all the more." He smiled at each of them in turn. "My Ponds, my best friends," he said, addressing Rory and Amy, before allowing his gaze to rest on River. "And my wife, who I love more than anything else in this universe."

His green gaze was warm and earnest, and River couldn't help but feel reassured that the love of her life returned her feelings.

Mostly.

"What about Rose?" she managed.

The Doctor shook his head, smile fading slightly. "Rose isn't in this universe anymore. She's trapped in a parallel one we call Pete's World, and the only way through involves fracturing the walls of the worlds, something I'm not keen on repeating. Versions of her are still here, but they aren't the Rose I know, and I'm not the the man she knows, not anymore. My ninth and ten forms were hers. Right before I regenerated into this me, I went to New Years 2005 and told a Rose Tyler that had never met me that she would have a fantastic year. She was the first and last face that face saw, and then I went into the TARDIS and regenerated. I still love and miss her, but Rose Tyler isn't my love to cherish, and I don't love her as much as I once did. Not really."

And with that, the last of the Time Lords left the room.

* * *

"D'you believe him?" Rory asked softly.

"About what?" his wife shot back quickly, not meeting his eye. She was only somewhat successfully hiding that her eyes had teared up.

"About not loving Rose as much as he once did."

Amy shrugged, but River laughed aloud.

"Not at all," the latter said, sounding resigned.

"Why not?" Amy asked, not quite curious, but mildly interested.

River smiled sadly. "Isn't it obvious?" When neither of her parents seemed to get what she meant, the smile melted away and she sighed.

"Rule Number 1: The Doctor lies."

* * *

 **Welp. There you go. Hope you enjoyed. Or, not enjoyed, per say... cried in sympathy in the face of the exquisite sadness of our favorite alien? Yeah, that sounds about right.**

 **So! RFF? Please? Thank you.**

 **The word of the day is FEZ! Why? Because fezzes are cool. I'm serious. I honestly like fezzes. I liked them before I watched _Doctor Who_. Ever read the book by Maira Kalman called _What Pete Ate from A-Z_? Well, Pete is the dog, and he ate a fez. There was also a fez in _Next Stop, Grand Central_ _!_ Basically, what I'm saying is: read children's books my Maira Kalman. There are fezzes. (I don't own those books, by the way, nor am I Maira Kalman.)**

 **Love ya! lulu**


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